Photo credit: Taus Makhacheva, Цlумихъ (Tsumikh – Avar for “At the Eagle’s”), 2023, single-channel video, colour, sound, 60 min. 53 sec.
Production Support by Sharjah Art Foundation Production Grant
with additional support from the patrons group at the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture
Courtesy the artist
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Press release
TAUS MAKHACHEVA | Seeing, Touching, Imbibing
25.10.2025 – 16.01.2026
opening 25.10.2025 | h. 6-8 pm
Giorgio Persano is pleased to present Seeing, Touching, Imbibing, a solo exhibition by Taus Makhacheva. The exhibition explores the visual and corporeal life of images as they get cast and recast in history.
At the heart of the exhibition is the film ЦIумихъ (Tsumikh – Avar for “At the Eagle’s”) (2023), which explores the complex layering of history, memory and memorialisation. Choreographing between autobiography, documentary and performance, Makhacheva examines the life and afterlife of her grandfather, the celebrated Avar poet Rasul Gamzatov. The film juxtaposes official commemorations of Gamzatov, the artist’s personal recollections, and his image in public memory today. Makhacheva features herself in the film, rehearsing the impossible task of being cast as her grandfather. Her character is presented through a series of encounters where an ensemble of figures — from art handlers and a van driver to a museum director and state officials — lays claim to the poet. Through a cinematic staging of Gamzatov’s sculptural busts, oral histories and archival records, the artist reveals the discrepancies between public and private remembrance of the poet, where various memorabilia is repeatedly constructed and deconstructed.
The second film presented in the exhibition, Ясалъул яс (Yasalul yas – Avar for “The Daughter of the Daughter of”) (2024), focuses on a concrete sculpture that captures three generations of the artist’s family. At its core is a bust of the artist’s great-grandfather, Gamzat Tsadasa, an Islamic scholar and writer who belonged to the first generation of public figures in Dagestan to be memorialised in bronze. Encasing it is a plaster bust of her grandfather, Rasul Gamzatov. These two busts are further encased within a concrete block whose proportions match the head and shoulders of the artist’s mother, Patimat Gamzatova. For Makhacheva, this act of layering histories arises from a phrase she once heard when being introduced to someone: “Расулил ясалъул яс” (Rasulil yasalul yas, Avar for “the daughter of the daughter of Rasul”). This layering is at once an enshrinement and a concealment; a preservation and an erasure; a remembrance and a refusal: showing how histories are sculpted, moulded and monumentalised.
A series of photographs and objects further documents and deconstructs this central motif. The Making of (2024) unfolds sculpture’s composition, and 42.6729165, 47.7314644 (2023) is named after the installation’s coordinates, tracing the sculpture’s journey. Initially created as an anchoring object in her film, the work completes its travel by being placed in the Dagestani landscape, transforming into a private monument.
The exhibition invites visitors to examine the architecture of memory. Traversing the space of intimacy and relations, the artist attempts to reclaim the image of her grandfather and poet from its instrumentalisation by larger political narratives. Makhacheva dissects how histories are built and what monuments conceal, posing a crucial question that resonates through each piece: who truly has the right to shape history, and how does it live, breathe, and transform in the hands of others?
Artworks of exhibitions
